New York (AFP)
After having resisted for a long time, Boeing finally resolved on Tuesday to recommend training for simulator pilots, considered more expensive and likely to further delay the return to service of the 737 MAX plane grounded for almost 10 months after two accidents having killed 346 people.
The American aircraft manufacturer thus accedes to the requirements of the European and Canadian civil aviation authorities, which had made it a sine qua non condition to give the green light to a lifting of the flight ban.
The simulator reproduces the actual flight conditions.
Before the accidents of Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines, the pilots at the controls of the Boeing 737 MAX were only trained on a computer, and on an iPad for those who were already used to the 737 NG, the predecessor of the MAX.
"It is a decision that goes in the right direction," commented Michel Merluzeau, expert at Air Insight Research. "It shows that everything that needs to be done before the MAX is put back into service is done. And that no shortcut is taken."
"It is unbelievable that it took fatal accidents, numerous investigations and unprecedented public pressure for Boeing to reach this decision," deplored Peter DeFazio, the Democratic chairman of the parliamentary committee responsible for transport.
One of Boeing's business arguments for selling the MAX to airlines was that it would save money because there would be no need to train specially trained pilots for the 737 NG, according to a promotion brochure viewed in November by the company. AFP.
Under pressure from rival Airbus, Boeing wanted to go as quickly as possible.
- One million dollars -
Boeing had even pledged to provide a million dollar rebate per aircraft to Southwest Airlines in case its pilots need special simulator training, according to a source familiar with the negotiations.
The Boeing turnaround comes just days before the effective arrival of David Calhoun, appointed in late December to replace Dennis Muilenburg, sacked after a crisis management deemed catastrophic and strained relations with the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) ).
"Safety is Boeing's number one priority," said Greg Smith, acting managing director, in a statement. "Public, customer and shareholder confidence in the 737 MAX is important to us," he said.
It is nevertheless the FAA, responsible for the approval of commercial aircraft in the United States, which must decide on the appropriate training. Until then, the American regulator had resisted calls from its European and Canadian peers for simulator training.
"The agency will examine Boeing's recommendation" during joint operations with teams of American and foreign airlines because the training is part of the certification of the 737 MAX, an FAA spokesman told AFP on Tuesday .
The data from these tests will allow, he added, to define the necessary training.
According to a regulatory source, the FAA is expected to announce its decision in the coming weeks.
Simulator training will be costly and time consuming, which should disrupt the flight schedules of 737 MAX customer airlines, as there are currently only 34 aircraft specific simulators worldwide, eight of which are from Boeing. In contrast, around 800 MAX aircraft have been produced to date, of which almost half (387) were already in service before the aircraft was grounded in mid-March 2019.
Southwest Airlines, the 737 MAX's first customer and which has built its entire expansion strategy on this aircraft, has no operational simulator.
"We have three simulators that are at different stages of certification with the FAA and hope to receive three more by the end of 2020," a spokesperson for the company told AFP.
United Airlines indicates that it has not yet established a schedule to train its pilots if ever training in simulator was a prerequisite.
"We are going to train our pilots one after the other," said a spokesperson, adding that the carrier has only one machine in his possession and has ordered three more, which he should receive from here at the end of March.
© 2020 AFP